


The Young Diana and "The 12 Treatises on Bodily Pleasure"

by YesBothWays



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Feminism, Gen, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: Stories telling of Diana’s experience incorporating the wisdom of Clio’s 12 Treatises on Bodily Pleasure, classical Amazon philosophical dialogues exploring on the concept of what pleasure means to the Amazons, into her life.The 12 Treatises:  1) Sustenance. 2) Luxuries 3) Exhilaration 4) Beauty 5) Intimacy





	1. The First Treatise:  Sustenance

            I remember when _The Treatises_ first began to shape my experience of this life. A longing to touch the depths of Clio's insights sent me out on that first adventure, the very first I ever took. That would the first time I joined a party of Amazons training themselves to face war, although I was still too young to be allowed to ride on my own. Antiope said then that I did not yet know how to trust a horse, and so a horse would not possibly know how to trust me. She said I could sit before her on Aegis, her great warhorse. I made no protest to this, as Antiope had always said I was still a little too young to train for war. So when Antiope lifted me and placed me on the back of her warhorse, my chest swelled with pride simply to be included, even if I could not yet ride alone like one of the others. I could feel the power in Aegis soft steps as she made her way along paths through the woods.

            I remember distinctly how I could feel the soft shift in the breastplate of Antiope's armor against my back and realizing that she moved ever so slightly with her horse's gait, swaying side to side. I thought it strange that a body so strong could be moved so easily, and I noticed then a similar movement in the other Amazons who surrounded us. I so wanted to match myself to their company that I took up that same subtle movement, and I could feel at once the way Antiope matched her center of gravity to Aegis's to ensure that any sudden movement – rearing, bolting, turning – that Aegis made, no matter how fierce, would not be able to send her to the ground. Without conscious thought, Antiope trusted the powerful, magnificent animal beneath us to protect both of them along with myself. And as I matched my movements with Antiope's, shifting softly, like water at the edge of a quiet ocean, I recognized the brilliance held in even so subtle a trained and disciplined movement of the many that shaped her life. I trusted Antiope deeply and instinctively.  

            With that realization filling my mind and heart, I stopped troubling over my mother's worry that was drawing my attention back, behind us and turned my heart fully to the discovery that I hoped to make traveling amidst this brave and magnificent company. I wanted to touch Clio's wisdom not as words on a page but as a living wisdom held in both mind and body in that deep knowing characteristic of Amazons. My mother, Hippolyta, had first introduced me to Clio's great works, but I knew she did not imagine I would become inspired as I was. She did not expect words read to me in the comfort of my bed to send me on rugged paths through the mountains.  

            When my mother would lead me to bed at night, I never wanted to go sleep. I would try to keep her at my side telling me stories or reading to me for hours, resisting the time when I would settle down and grow quiet and let go of another day that had passed. My mother said I had a strong will, and she was patient with my desire to gain one last insight, one last inspiration, one last connection before being reluctantly satisfied a given day. When she asked me one night what story I wanted to hear, I said something that contained wisdom as deep as the Suri well that ran so deep into the ground that the weight of the earth bearing down on the water pushed it up, and buckets could be filled from the spilling water with little labor. My mother laughed with her delight in me and went to her own rooms. She brought back a scroll held on heavy, elaborate rollers cast of bronze.

            The shape of the story like the shape of the scroll was unfamiliar to me. I expected a series of happenings, and instead, I overheard the long conversation of a gathering of Amazon women who were lying on the ground around a cheery fire, drinking spiced wine in peace, and discussing the nature of life. They sought together to understand the nature of pleasure. A long time of enslavement and then a time of war had passed not long before, so they had spent many years with their thoughts consumed with the nature of suffering. They hoped that by turning their minds to considering pleasure, they might restore some of the wisdom that they worried the Amazons had lost while immersed in the foolishness and confusion of men.

            They wondered if they were not untrained after so many years of hard living told even hold such an inquiry, and so they began with discussing the most base, the most elemental of pleasures which they called by the name written on along the top of the scroll that I traced with my fingers: Sustenance. This was the pleasure known to all animals. This was simple pleasure of having those needs met which sustain life.

            I followed the elegant patterns of those women's thoughts every night as my mother read to me the length of the scroll. Their dialogue moved like a dance, as they responded to one another's turns and delighted in one another's skill. Clio's thoughtful questions were like the music held beneath a dance, giving a foundation to their thoughts and inspiring the flow of the elegant pattern of movement. At the end, Clio drew all of their thoughts together into one unified whole, a masterwork of thought. She even tied their thoughts back to the beginning that I had long forgotten by then.

            Clio explained that pleasure of finding sustenance was the most common of pleasures, and its cultivation the most universal of efforts. Because of this, the pleasure often went unremarked and was experienced without fully being savored. Among men, the work of cultivating sustenance had been diminished and belittled. Such work was seen as the rightful work of women and those men who were considered among the conquered, where disenfranchised by war or the machinations of the wealthy. Meanwhile, the endeavors of conquest, war, and politics, which in the hands of men meant crafting policies of domination as inescapable as newly woven fishing nets, were revered and reserved for privileged men. And so the toil of Amazons had gone first to creating sustenance for their own captors, until too little was left for themselves and their energies were all but spent. The robbery of such a base pleasure left them unable to obtain higher pleasures and kept them weak.

            Clio's final thoughts at the close of the treatise that remained echoing in my thoughts as if to reveal the untouchable depths of her wisdom. She spoke of the fear that lingered among the Amazons that living too long in suffering had made them strangers to pleasure and so to their own true nature. She spoke of a time of battle, when the Amazons fought desperately for their freedom. After a particularly battle brutal battle that lasted through an entire night, Clio finally went away to rest with her surviving sisters. She told the story of the hours after the battle. She was given a piece of rough, common bread. The taste, Clio said, brought her more pleasure than the finest feast in the days of freedom and abundance in the months to come. A pot of dusty, barely heated water that she used to scrub the grime off her skin brought her more pleasure than a long, steaming bath would in the days of abundance that were still unseen on the horizon . And a handful of hours of sleep on the cold ground with no fire and instead only the warmth of one of her Amazon sisters beside her were the sweetest of her life. Clio said that while suffering might make one's body and mind grow hardened and insensitive to pain, knowing a time without pleasure might give the Amazons a greater respect and recognition for pleasure and so a greater capacity to savor the pleasure of finding sustenance. She spoke of how well the Amazons had cultivated their lands once they were made free, and she saw a time of hunger reflected in this. Clio said:

            _Only one who has truly known hunger will ever find the true depths of pleasure held even within a commonplace meal._

            When my mother finished reading me the scroll, she turned it carefully on its rollers, preparing to return the treatise to her shelf. She drew blankets around me and gave me a kiss. I lay awake in the dark and thought of the story. All the other Amazons besides myself had known war. So they must also know the pleasures of sustenance. I thought of how they toiled gladly at the most commonplace of tasks: feeding chickens, cultivating plants, grinding grains, making wine. I had little interest in such work. I did not like to think that I was in any way unlike an Amazon. As I lay awake, I began to believe that it was because I had never known a time of hunger and toil, a time of forced servitude and suffering. An awareness of the first pleasure was not awoken in me. Everyday, I was fed well. Every evening, I had to be corralled into a bath and often left my mother laughing and shaking her head by hopping out to fetch some other distraction to keep my focus as she tried to get me clean before bed. Every night, I went to sleep in this warm, soft bed.

            So in the days to follow, I begged my mother to allow me to ride with Antiope and her troop when next they made their way up into the mountain passes. That was the only place on the island where I could possibly know hunger. The Amazons were too skilled at cultivating harvests and preserving food. But Antiope's troop of Amazons would climb the mountain passes carrying little and return rugged and hardened with their eyes shaded by the return of memories of a time of war. They were always quiet and grim in the days that followed, and yet I thought looking back also more merry in a way, deeper and richer in their enjoyment of everyday life. When I persisted in my request and Antiope forcefully backed the meaning held in my desire, my mother relented to the two of us. My mother trusted Antiope fully, and the mountains were only a day's ride northwest. Our journey would last only six days, as we rose to the summit and returned. And I wondered if so short a distance and so meager a span of time would be far enough and long enough to learn what I hoped to learn.

            As we came to the end of our full day of riding, the trees thinned and large rocks jutted up from the earth. The grasses became sparse and dry, pale brown dirt appeared very much unlike the rich and far darker soft soils beneath the straw in the gardens that I knew so well. This was a wilder place than those I knew in my familiar world, so well that they felt like a part of me, and the touch of many skilled hands of Amazons had made a far lighter imprint upon these lands. The sun set as we made our camp for the night. The side of the mountain was visible ahead and became only a black absence of stars on the horizon that lay ahead of us. I slept between blankets on a thin bed of leaves in a circle of women surrounded by a circle of small fires and fell asleep easily, feeling well protected and also tired from the day of riding.

            When the sun first began to lighten the edges of the sky, we arose. The women secured bottles of water and weapons to their bodies. They freed their horses of their burdens and raised their packs into the trees on long ropes they cast over high branches to keep animals from getting into stores of food and water. Even as the stripped down party began to follow rough, barely worn pathways that rose gradually upwards into the mountains, a hard edge of resolve came over the women. I found myself challenged by the struggle to climb in many places even with so many strong hands stopping to lift me and steady me as made our slow ascent up the mountain.

            Throughout the day, the sun beat down on us without any filter. A wind came that seemed to lessen the heat at first, but the wind also kicked up dust that clung to our skin and began to itch and even burn a little. The use of water was far sparing to use to wash the dirt away. Antiope gave me cakes of long-soaked grains, pressed and dried, held together with a little honey. The other women did not eat anything. As the sun lowered, I imagined that we might climb through the night. All my focus was consumed with finding the next place to put my hands and my feet. Every point of contact between myself and the stones ached and stung – my hands, my feet, my knees, my elbows. Every my chin was roughed by stone after many hours of climbing.

            Suddenly, I recognized that the women ahead of me were gone. We were still far from the top, and watched others pass through openings into caves. When my turn came, I found myself entering narrow passageways into caves with some places clearly altered by Amazon stoneworkers. There were flatter places inside, and the woman quickly began to make a rough camp. Antiope gave me another cake, and as I recognize now that I was the only one eating, I protested. Antiope said that when I could put my hand on her shoulder without climbing to do so, then I could decide for myself what my rations should be on a march but until then, I had to trust her judgment.   So I ate and at once felt utterly exhausted and half asleep already. Still, I found that I could not truly fall to sleep at first even as exhausted as I was. The hard rock reached through the thin blanket beneath me and made by bones seem to think that I was still climbing.

            I felt that I had only just fallen asleep when I awoke to find the sun and the Amazons rising. The next day, I remember and yet the memory is strange. The hours were altered by my exhaustion, my mind emptied of all else, except making a way forward. Most of the day stands in my mind as an image of brown, sun-soaked rock somehow at once both bleary and exaggerated in focus, as if all the indistinguishable points along the pathways collapsed within my mind into one vision. I know that Antiope gave me more of the cakes of grain I was meant to eat, and I know that I had no will left to protest but took them at once so that my arms and legs would grow a little lighter and keep moving at my will. I had found the rations almost tasteless before, but on that second day, the grains themselves tasted as sweet as honey and the lightest taste of honey almost overwhelmed my tongue the way the unfiltered sun would overcome my eyes when I moved at the wrong angle.

            I remember the sight of Amazons around me. Even grown and powerful in both body and spirit, they were beginning to suffer. I had been given much more water than they allowed themselves and also some food while they had none. I began to notice a strange, quiet trade moving through the company. Just as they would always reach out to steady me when I slipped or stumbled and to lift me when my height or strength proved not great enough, they would reach out to steady and support one another and share strength among them. As each of them faded and wavered, the others would raise her up, only to eventually waver and be lifted in turn.

            What I remember most vividly from that day was our discovery along those winding, rocky paths of a thicket of brambles dotted with wild berries. As we passed, the women stopped to reach carefully amidst the thorny vines and draw out small, delicate, purple berries. I was small enough to reach in under the tangled vines, and when I first put one of those wild berries in my mouth and bit through the tiny, tender clusters that burst into the taste of juice, I wholly believed that the place we stood was imbued with some divine power. The taste opened into a stunning breadth across my tongue with the bright, celebratory air of a decorative fan. My jaw nearly ached as I chewed slowly, trying to make those brief moments last as long as possible.

            Only as we marched onwards did I recognize that I had found what I had come seeking. The berries were not uncommon. Many such brambles grew around the island and carried a far greater harvest of fruits. But these were here along a desolate and arduous road. I had tasted in the living world what Clio seen so clearly in her vast wisdom; I had tasted the essence of the pleasure of sustenance.  

            I will also never forget the experience of reaching the summit of the mountain. My mind had been fully absorbed in the incredible toil of keeping pace with grown women, and so I had neglected to truly look around me. When I saw how high we had come, even though I felt nearly dizzied by how worn out I had become, my chest expanded and filled as if brimming with the most delicious, bright pool of sunlight. I felt truly an Amazon, a warrior. I knew in some wordless intuition that the power in my body was beyond what I could imagine, something I would never know until I drew it out, a little at a time. Many of the women touched my shoulders and gave me water from their bottles. Even Antiope was openly astonished that I had carried myself so far with so little help. They had expected to carry me at least some of the way to the summit. I still believe it was that long march that convinced Antiope to begin my training that very year, which we held in secret, as my mother would not agree.  

            As we sat all in a rough circle, Antiope drew out maps she had carried on her back and spoke to the Amazons about the layout of the island. Her mind was always turning over strategies to overcome an imagined invasion. Easier paths went down the far side of the mountain to the shores. A cove there harbored rough boats tended only rarely but consistently throughout the year. These were loaded not with provisions but with weapons kept in sealed vases that protected them rush and tarnish. This was a desperate path to take over the mountain and a foolish one to seek in the hopes of making an escape, as anything the Amazons carried would slow their passage and make them vulnerable along these mountain paths. But the boats might provide the advantage of a small, unforeseen force and that could prove crucial in a time of war. Amazons in chains were still Amazons, and if they could be liberated even by a single sister, they could rise with unprecedented strength. This the Amazons knew well from their own history.

            I saw the women's faces change with their memories of war, and I wondered over what I did not know. As we bedded down to sleep that night out in the open, the women spoke softly to one another and kept close. I wanted nothing more than to wash the dust from my skin, but I wrapped myself in a blanket and lay down. The wind that night was so strong that it hollowed and so cold that it stung my ear. Still I slept, and in the morning, we began our descent.

            When I staggered and would have collapsed, I felt hands catch me easily. Damali lifted me up and placed me on her back. I held to her neck without protest and let her carry me for a while. I got down and walked some more, until I fell again. Then she took me up once more. We spent another night in the caves and set out on our last day among the mountains. Other women staggered and slipped. With no food and so little water, they were growing weaker with the passing hours, even as they continued to engage fully in the arduous journey down. When I began to stagger, Ptolema strapped me to her back, and I fell into a kind of sleep with my arms about her neck. Several other women carried me, sharing the burden, learning for the first time what it would mean to carry a child along the mountain paths. Antiope carried me last and longest, and I felt the change in her body the moment we reached level ground. I got down, even though I was drooping, and the ground felt so soft and hospitable that it filled my entire body with a sense of pleasure.

            The women built up fires and brought down their packs. The horses began to wander back, glad to see us returned. The rations of dried meats, apples, and cakes made of pressed nuts and oats that we shared among us would have seemed meager and wholly unappetizing to me before. That night, they were revealed to my mind as a magnificent feast – the miracle of hearty food in a wild place. I slept facing the fire, closer than necessary, as if hoping to supplant the memory of the cold wind atop the mountain that my body remembered when I lay down.

            The sound of that wind continued to echo in my spirit, and believing I was fast asleep with exhaustion the women spoke of their lives long ago. Their memories of sisters lost and years in captivity had been stirred. They talked of carrying me over the mountains if need be. The ferocity with which they spoke of the potential of an invasion was not lost on me even in my half-dreaming state. I hoped one day to become a fierce warrior capable of serving as a strongpoint in battle during a time of war, an immovable rock on which intrusive forces might break themselves in their will to dominate those that I loved. They were the ones who first loved me and gave me such a life as I had, filled with abundance and security. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the constant flow of gifts I received in my everyday life for the first time now that I was able now to truly envision myself alone in a barren place.

            I can remember almost nothing from the next day's journey home. Riding must have seemed easy to me by comparison. What I do still remember is my mother's hands reaching up to bring me down from Antiope's horse. In my memory, night had already fallen, so our return journey home must have been slow. I was put at once into a steaming bath, and my mother gently scrubbed the dirt, layered from days of sweat on the mountainside, from my skin. She washed my hair, tipping my head back and working a lather down to my scalp, then rinsing my hair. A feeling of bliss came over me so strong that I found myself weeping softly with no explanation as to why. But my mother did not need to ask. She understood from her own life what it meant to return to home and the dignity afforded by a life without want. She understood what it meant to return vulnerable and worn out to the strong hands of women every bit as kind as they were powerful.

            Instead of taking me to my bed, my mother dried my skin that felt so different being now made clean that I imagined it all quite new. She left my hair in a dry towel and wrapped blankets around me. She lay with me in her arms on a long, cushioned couch before a great, roaring fire. My fingers played with the bracelets my mother wore inside whenever she put aside her gauntlets. I pushed them out of the way tonight, and imagining they were hurting me, she took them off and set them aside. I traced the lines of scars that circled her wrists, feeling them distinctly with the tips of my fingers, and thought about the iron shackles that had bitten into her body. Such scars were common among Amazons, though they were growing faded and hard to distinguish with the passing years. This was my mother – a woman who rose up to form the sharp and unbroken spearhead of a great rebellion. These hands that had shattered iron shackles were the same hands worked a lather gently into my hair, cleaning carefully all the way to the roots, always without pulling.

            I did not fight sleep that night.. I gave myself over to it as I had to the many women who carried me along my journey and to my mother who awaited me at its end. When I awoke, the sun was well up in the sky. My body ached, but my chest sang with pride and the glory of my newfound wisdom. I found Eirene, and she made me sit and rest while she prepared my breakfast. She made me breakfast every morning before I went off with whatever tutor my mother had agreed to let guide the current era of my learning.

            On this morning especially, I could see the great joy Eirene took in preparing the meal for me. I watched as she skillfully dropped eggs into water that was heated to the perfect temperature that disturbed the surface of the water only gently, then as she toasted thin cuts of the finest, dark bread, and then as she and warmed sweet milk that she further sweetened with honey. I watched her delicately cut a melon from its rind. At the last moment, she smeared the toasted bread with a spread of herbs and ground nuts she had made and carefully placed the eggs on top, then she sprinkled this with the tiniest bits of bright red peppers and seeds.

            When Eirene put the plate of eggs, bowl of melon, and steaming mug before me, I simply sat and stared at the meal breathless. I came around the table and hugged her about her waist. I held as hard as I had those women who carried me down the mountainside. She held me back in surprise, believing that I had missed her and being home. I knew already before I returned to my seat and took the first bite that this would be the best meal I had ever tasted. To this day, when I eat an exquisite meal after I have grown truly hungry, my mind always compares the meal to that breakfast, the feast that marked my first homecoming.

            In the days to come, I closely studied commonplace work in Themryscira. With great eagerness, I learned to pour water in the mouths of buried clay vases that slowly watered gardens, precisely what and how much to feed chickens, cats, dogs, and horses to keep them well. I watched as every creature delighted in the magnificence of a belly filled among kindred company within a safe place. The caves that held great wheels of cheese turning edible and delicious with age and vast storehouses that held vases that stood taller than I was became a wonder to my mind. Timo taught me to break the seals on an earthen vase filled with dry, perfect grains. Inside seemed a treasure of breath-taking value. As we worked to grind the grain into a pure, silken flour, I stopped often to let the whole grains or the soft flour pour over my hand, through my fingers.

            During that time, my teachers all delighted in my focus, as I began to understand the true foundation on which Themryscira was built, which was not a foundation of carved stone but of rich, living soils and of plants and animals carefully cultivated by the wisdom and skills of the Amazons over the years. As I sought to understand the first bodily pleasure explored in Clio's treatises, new depths of pleasure opened out to me.   And I recognized for the first time the presence of the foundations of my own strength, a life crafted for me by so many women who took the greatest pleasure in raising me in abundance witnessing me with joy as I grew both free and strong.  


	2. The Second Treatise:  Luxuries

            Even that very first encounter with Clio's _Treatises_ changed the course of my life. I had climbed mountain paths alongside Amazon warriors, carried by my own strength and theirs. I had felt my chest grow proud – expand and open like the breast of an eagle perceiving the world while perched safe, high amidst the stones. A fire remained in my heart, as if sparked into life by the heat that poured into me being so high and so close to the sun. Everyday, I felt that fire rise and build in potency. I wanted nothing more than for my body to come to match this intensity of will, wanted nothing save to become a warrior worthy among my great people, one who could use my own body as a hammer that could shatter any iron locks fashioned by corrupt rulers, whether they be men or gods.  

            Every chance I could steal away, I ran to watch the Amazons focused on their training under Antiope's instruction. Having seen my ruggedness and my potential, Antiope consistently encouraged my mother to allow her to begin to train me. When my mother did not relent, Antiope offered to train me at night, if I could slip away unseen. She saw keenly that she could trust me to keep our secret, even when I was so young, because she knew how loath I would be to lose my chance to gain the learning I so eagerly longed to begin. I did keep our secret for many years, until my mother discovered us and relented to allow me to train in the open among my sisters.

            Under Antiope's instruction, I changed rapidly. She showed me how to train my body. First, I would train myself to the movement she showed me, until it flowed through me without a focused thought. Then I would add explosive energy, gaining power, even while maintaining my precision. Lastly, I would open out my body and stretch, training the muscles first to contrast and then to elongate. This was the pattern that made strength, building it into the body like fertility cultivated into a rich soil over many years of skillful practice.

            I found myself gaining power and also a great appetite. My mother said I was growing and encouraged me to eat anything I had a mind to eat. So I did. In that way, Clio's first treatise made me far more aware of the pleasure I experienced everyday in food and drink. But I looked always for ways to season myself and become more rugged, more enduring. I considered the incredible luxuries that had always filled my life with skepticism, believing that they could only dull my sense of the pleasure of sustenance and even mute the potential of my body to take on the shape and substance of a warrior.

            At night, I would often sneak down the empty hallways and onto the balcony nearest my bedroom to sleep exposed to the night air, lying on the hard stones. The sun usually woke me, and I would return to my bed to hide my outings from my mother. A few times, I did not wake in the morning's first light, and my mother found me asleep outside. Eventually, she told one of the night guard to keep a look out for me there on the balcony, and Efimia began to lift me up in her strong arms in the middle of the night and return me to my bed. Then I began to sleep on the floor in my room, and with no sun to wake me, my mother often found me asleep on the hard floor of my room with no blankets beneath me.

            Every night, my mother would tuck me into bed all the same. She would surround me with soft furs and beautifully woven blankets, as if trying to keep me in bed. I would always push the luxurious furs away impatiently, but I loved to trace the figures in the fabric of those many great Amazons of our history. But their presence reminded me of my greatest longing and sent me to the floor once my mother had gone for the night.   I was learning the rigors of discipline, and I felt pressed against time, wanting to transform faster than was possible.

            My mother finally caught on to the correlation between the changes in my behavior and the first of _The Treatises_. Instead of denying me knowledge, she offered me more to counterbalance to what I was learning. So one night, my mother brought another scroll on bronze rollers from her rooms, and she introduced to me the second of Clio's _Treatises of Bodily Pleasure_. As soon as my mother began to read, the voices of the Amazons in the dialogue roared up into vivid life before me. I was riveted and listened intently as my mother's familiar, rich voice called into life the wisdom of the Amazons who had gone before.

            After their discussion of sustenance and Clio's conclusions that knowing deprivation could intensify the pleasure of commonplace fulfillments, the women spoke of the pleasures to be found in abundance. They began to call fulfillments that went beyond the meeting of basic needs luxuries. As the others offered their deepest thoughts, Clio parsed their ideas, sorting them into threads of clarity, with the ease and mastery of the most gifted of weavers. There were young Amazons on the island, stolen from slave ships and rescued from shipwrecks. There also many old enough to remember well their former captors among the world of men, for when the gods and goddesses fought beside our people, those Amazons who dared to draw closest to their wrath and fury were imbued with some of their unleashed power and gifted with long lives.

            My mother and Antiope fought nearest to the gods, and years after Ares told me that I was the daughter of Zeus, my mother told me the full truth of how she came to bear me into this world. She ran through a wall of smoke and bristling electricity left in the atmosphere, threatening to form lightening to come to Zeus when he fell to earth. She found him broken by Ares's wrath. All others were afraid to draw near, even the fiercest warriors like Antiope. My mother alone ran to Zeus, and some of her sisters followed her as far as they could. She knew that he had given risked life for the Amazons, and so her heart was moved to risk her life to come to him. As my mother sought to bring Zeus comfort while he died, his blood stained her hands, her arms, her legs, and even her chest where she held him. Zeus told her that the gift of bringing forth life that he carried within his powers would cling to her and allow her to bring forth a child when she wished. With that unsought and unwilled gift given, he died as she held him. When she returned to the others, they stepped back from her, overcome by the change that had overtaken her amidst the unleashed power of the gods. And so my mother returned to the sea from whence the Amazons had come in the beginning to wash away the god's blood and shed the aura of power clinging to her, so that she could return to her sisters, though it never entirely faded away and established her as their Queen.

            I knew none of this that night. I only listened to my mother recite Clio's words of wisdom, and when Clio spoke my mother's name among those who shared the fear that the Amazons would become like to their oppressors in the presence of excess wealth and abundance, I did not truly consider how Clio felt far away and ancient while my mother was present and filled with life still. Clio upturned a quiet, collective fear among the Amazons that the rising abundance of Themyscira would lead them to becoming like those who had once enslaved them. She spoke of the risk posed to that Amazons that they would equate the celebration of abundance and the honoring of the richness of life with the excess and worship of wealth of the captors they had overthrown. Their fear of sharing the identities of their captors belied their freedom. The cultivation of the riches of the Amazon arose from their willing work and was shared without greed or manipulation. Clio said:

 

            _You will know the difference in purpose luxuries serve among a people by considering who is revered, dignified, and honored: the maker or the consumer._

            Clio spoke of those revered among them who were masters in the crafts of making wine and bread, sweets, and beautiful works of craft of every manner. She said that all were born with passions and aptitudes for certain forms of pleasure and little sensitivity or passion for others. I knew at once, even as a small girl, that I was not given to the pleasure found in luxuries, and I wondered I properly revered those who held this gift and understood this pleasure most fully. I asked my mother who among the Amazons had the greatest affinity for this pleasure, and my mother said she thought Zona would be the greatest among us. So that night, as I lay down in bed, content enough to sleep among the soft cushions for one night, I planned to find Zona the following day in pursuit of understanding her wisdom and this form of pleasure more fully.

            I found Zona's home easily, as everyplace on the island had always been willingly opened to me. The cobblestone streets were shining with the very last of the morning dew. Even before I knocked on her door, I stood and considered the uniqueness of Zona's home. While other doors were of plain wood, hers was painted in a bright and festive red and hung with a wreath. The wreath was of fragrant branches when I grew close and dotted with vines of white flowers. In her windows were boxes of many bright and beautiful flowers and many fragrant herbs meant for cooking. I knocked, and when she opened the door, Zona was delighted to find me on her doorstep.

            As I came into her home, I told Zona about my current mission. Even as I spoke, my eyes moved around this lovely place where she lived. Her loom stood in the far corner, and there were beautiful spools of thread on an orderly shelf along one entire wall. At the back of the house, in a separate room, there was a clay oven where she baked her breads. I had long known that Zona's fabrics and her breads were considering exquisite, rare, and filled with mastery. The chair where she sat to weave was crafted of beautiful and ornate wood with a perfect, soft rock that kept her back from wearing out as she worked.

            As I looked about today, I noticed so many beautiful and wonderfully made things: clayworks, ironworks, leatherworks, and glassworks. None of these were things she had made. And I understood with a kind of quiet epiphany that these were all gifts. Masterworks of craft would gravitate to her home, because Zona was always giving gifts as rare and wondrous and because she honored such works so deeply that there was satisfaction in giving them to her above anyone.

            Zona listened patiently as I recounted _The Treatise_ to her as best I could. I grew coy at first, because she knew the book already. But Zona said that she did not yet know it from my point of view and listened intently as I spoke. As I sat up on a wooden stool with a perfectly curved seat, I watched as Zona made a stuffed, braided loaf of bread. She brought out a risen dough that seemed the makings of a common loaf, a combination of flours, water, honey, and salt. Under her skilled hands, the dough was transformed. The perfect elasticity, texture, and shapes were produced. She rolled out sections of bread, then she made a mixture of nuts, spices, and honey and filled each section. These she braided all of these into an ornate shape. Then she dotted the entire loaf with jewels of sweet, dried fruits and brushed it with egg.

            As her loaf baked, Zone made a drink of fresh, sweet milk heated to rising in the pot mixed with a root powder, many spices, and honey. When the loaf came from the oven a magnificent, perfect brown, she brushed it with honey. She poured the drink into a wooded pitcher, and then she gave me a stack of nested clay cups to carry. I followed her as we took the bread on a board and the drink outside.

            We walked along the rows until we found a patch of gardens filled with Amazons working in the last of the coolness of morning. I watched as the Amazons stopped what they were doing and came to admire and savor Zona's impromptu offer of breakfast. None of them questioned the occasion. They all put aside their focus on so many tasks that filled the day to savor the artistry and splendor of Zona's work. Zona knew the precise field and season that determined the quality of the flour, the season that fed the taste of the honey, the place the salt was harvested. She knew the way the cows' milk reflected the condition of the fields where they grazed. She knew the quality of each spice and its rarity.

            As the women stood and ate and drank, it became clear to me that they were savoring more than just a bit of sweet, perfect bread and a cup of rich drink as an unexpected addition to their previous breakfasts. They were savoring their lives, the taste of abundance, the richness of what it was in some way that ran down to the core to be an Amazon. When I tore away a sticky stretch of bread and opened up the springing outside to see the golden filling inside and breathed in the scent of the spices, I touched on a wisdom possessed among my people and yet still marvelously new for me – a kindred difference. I told myself that I must always remember to honor such wisdom, for it was a gift shared among my people that enriched their lives and my own that I could never provide myself.

            For many days, I noticed the finest luxuries around me. I would think how Zona would admire them, and I would find a far greater respect for them than before. When I was given a wooden cup one evening, I noticed how the firelight danced on the wood. The wood was unique, freckled with dots much like bird's eyes. The color was rich and golden as honey. The shape was perfectly matched to the hand. I asked who had made this cup, and my mother said that Halkyone had carved it. I asked her if I could have it, and the next day, I brought the cup to Zona. She held the simple, elegant cup in her hand, admiring with work with such depth. Then she smiled in gratitude for my thoughtful gift. Zona never forget the cup's maker nor whom had gifted it to her. All the years we knew one another, whenever I came into her home, she would offer me a drink in this same cup.

            So my skepticism towards what was soft and ornate, what offered an abundance of pleasure and what stood entirely apart from war faded away. Such gifts arose from a wisdom that never would have been born in me without my being lifted by the wisdom of my many sisters. Even as I knew that I did not possess an affinity for this form of pleasure, I wondered what my own affinities would be. And I developed a longing to know the rest of the twelve pleasures and what life had in store for me, a desire as deep and yet less sharp and demanding than my desire to become a warrior who could stand proud even among so many honorable Amazons warriors. Though it did nothing to tarnish the latter, even if it did keep me in my bed most nights.


	3. The Third Treatise:  Exhilaration

            Over the coming year, I walked through this world knowing the pleasures of sustenance and luxury with the heightened and sharpened quality of conscious awareness. My mother was proud to see me growing to become an Amazon, learning a deep respect for our history and our ways of seeing and of being in this world. While Antiope trained me in the arts of combat in secret, my mother began to train me to ride horses out in the open. I had known no greater joy in life.

            My mother, Queen Hippolyta, loved horses as deeply she loved her own sisters. I knew that she felt grief for her lost sisters who died in war or during their time as slaves. She would grow quiet and grave during times of remembrance. When our sisters circled through the catacombs bearing lights of love and remembrance, she would weep silently and then sleep many long hours into the next day, as her spirit wandered the place beyond consciousness searching to reach her lost sisters. I would listen to the women tell of their dreams the following day, and I would feel a longing to know those Amazons who were passed away. But the words spoken of their loss were always soft words. I only ever saw my mother speak with the heat of rage as she spoke of the Amazon horses that were taken away, tormented foolishly as men tried to break them and subjugate them by their own methods of use, and then were slaughtered when they became wild and fierce beyond measure and so were seen as lacking all value.

            The war to free the Amazons began after my mother and her sisters worked together to free not themselves but only a select three of their sisters in secret. It was made to appear as if these three had drowned together, and they spent two long years living in secret in caves along the shore, stealing weapons, and also stealing common horses and finding wild horses and training them for war. On the night the Amazons finally rose up and made their first escape, they stole as many weapons as they could. They joined the small remnant who had been waiting for them for so many long months. And it was that small number of horses, my mother said, that allowed the leaders to move swiftly among the fields, delivering orders and shoring up the strength of their sisters, which allowed the to defend themselves from men long enough to win the favor of the gods through their valor.

            On the Amazon island, horses were never fenced or gated. Wild horses and tame were one body with spirits driven by different natures and desires. The many fields of Themryscira were dotted with tamed horses too old to ride, and many of these would come to walk alongside younger horses who were assisting in hard labors that they used to do. They would receive light burdens and the same kind words as those now taking up work that was once theirs for many horses will suffer when they are without labor. My mother's great war horse, Timon, lingered in the fields near the fortress where we lived, and he was always easy to find and ready come running to her aid at the distinct sound of her horn.

            The day my training began, my mother took me out for a ride, and as we approached Timon even as he trotted briskly towards us, my mother said that I was going to lead us on our way today.

            "But I am so small," I said. "Why would he listen to me?"

            My mother turned gravely and picked me up. She carried me across the field with one arm with her saddle draped over the other. She wanted me to see her face as she explained to me carefully.

            "I am also too small," she said. "No human is big enough to tell a horse what to do. If you get into a battle of wills with a horse, you will lose and one or both of you will very likely get hurt or killed in the process. You have to speak in a way that a horse understands and learn to get what you want to come into alignment with what they want," she said.

            All day, we rode about the island. I learned to use my knees, my hands, my voice, and even the leanings of my body to tell Timon where to turn and which way to carry us. My mother directed me to lead us towards harsher terrain throughout the day. Once, as we walked along the shoreline, Timon refused to turn down a path of smooth, gray shale and turned the other way towards jagged stones instead. My will flared up, and I considered trying to make him go the way I wanted. Instead, I went through every form of direction I had been taught to give. He shook his head and eventually turned towards me and blew. So I let him walk the way he wanted, mystified by his refusal. As we passed along the beach, a sudden wave surged far beyond the waterline and crashed against the stones. I saw the path I wanted us to take disappear beneath roiling water and the stones return slippery and wet only after a long time under churning water.

            "If you expect a horse to trust you, then you have to trust the horse," my mother said simply.

            Even before my mother spoke, I knew her words were true in my spirit. I felt them take their place in my heart – a deep, Amazonian wisdom. As we wandered by caves along the shoreline, I thought of those three Amazons – Eos, Kore, and Alala – who lived by the shores of the sea in rugged solitude, fearing always that they would be caught, with only horses to make up their numbers and form the foundation of strength on which the Amazon nation would rise up to cast off their chains and claim their rightful place in this world.

            When we climbed down, I leaned my head against Timon's great muzzle. I thanked him for carrying us. I turned to find my mother smiling, her eyes beginning to shine with tears, as she watched me, and she took my hand in silence as we walked across the fields.

            Perhaps the greatest thing about being the youngest among the Amazons, besides knowing that a nation would rise up in your defense if anyone meant to harm you, was that so many Amazons took such great joy in teaching me what they knew. So in the months that followed, I was lifted up onto at least one Amazon's horse everyday. I wandered the island that was a landscape suddenly transformed into a training field without walls for my riding with willing teachers around every turn.

            I can remember so vividly the first day that I went for a ride alone. My mother was pouring over scrolls and making a ledger of some form. I came to ask her if we could ride that day. She turned to me, barely moving away from her thoughts.

            "You can ride Timon alone if you like. Keep away from the shores," she said.

            I stood motionless for a long moment. My standing there quiet registered more deeply in her mind. She turned to me again, as she dipped her pen.

            "Unless you are afraid. He trusts you. I can help you learn not to trust him if you need," she said.

            "No!" I nearly shouted, and she smiled at me in silence.

            I turned and ran from the room without saying another word. I found Timon, and he came to meet me. I climbed a water trough and took a long time to secure the saddle on his back. He waited patiently, turning and bucking towards me. He was happy, I realized – happy to be riding out with me. I used the water trough to climb onto his back, and we rode all over the island. I beamed at everyone I met, and I could see that they were all proud of me, and many shouted as much. They praised Timon as much as they did me, and he flicked his mane and stamped with pride, as well.

            When I grew sore and hungry, I finally led Timon back to the edge of field where I had found him. I was sad to let go of this first ride, and my chest felt full to brimming, as if the strong sunlight of the day had been pouring into me and filling me like a basin with liquid fire. An image of us running across the field came into my mind, and my heart rose up and beat hard. I felt my own fear washed under by trust in Timon, and I found myself leaning forward. I whispered to Timon, and he raised his head and bucked in surprise. When I encouraged him only once more, he broke out into a gentle run.

            The wind rushed, and the pounding of Timon's hooves felt at one with the pounding of my own heart. I let out a cry of fierce joy. Even in all my lessons with Antiope, I had never felt more a warrior than I did in that moment. I felt as if I had sprouted wings and lifted up with the strength of an eagle. Yet I felt also the thudding of the ground beneath us. Timon ran in great, loping circles about the field, before he slowed. His shoulders flicked with wild energy, and a sweat had broken out on both of our skin.

            I led us to the courtyard before our home, and my mother must have heard an announcement of our coming or seen us from her window. She came to bring me down from Timon's back. She helped me tend to him, before he wandered away to the fields. I was so ecstatic that I could hardly stop telling her about how Timon ran with me, even when I knew I was repeating my story. I circled around in the telling, because I could not find the right words to capture what I had felt. My mother laughed and grinned, as she led the way inside. She set me to get washed and gathered together a meal, all the time listening to my eager and addled story of my first ride and how it felt, how my spirit soared and stretched roots down into the ground both at once, catching the strength of the wind and earth and of the fierce sun all at one time.

            I went out and walked among the horses before evening came, gazing at them with quiet love and admiration. They added so much to the strength of the sisterhood of Amazons and so much beyond strength, so much love and camaraderie, so much beauty and magnificence. When I returned and climbed into bed, my mother came with a scroll that I recognized as one of Clio's _Twelve Treatises of Bodily Pleasure._ I sat up eagerly, as she sat beside me and prepared to read from the scroll. She opened up the scroll, and I read at the top the name of this particular treatise: "The Third Treatise ~ Exhilaration."

            "I think that this would make a suitable way to commemorate your day," my mother said.

            We took turns that night reading from the scroll. I felt wrapped up and included there among the many voices of the women who offered up their insights to be transformed by Clio's multifaceted wisdom, the way that metals are refined and melded together by fire into purer, stronger substances. The women spoke of the way that the Amazons of their time continued to leave their protected island. Even though they always returned home, many Amazons seemed to quickly grow restless. They worried that these were being quietly driven from their home and the lives they had won, haunted by the wounds of the past.

            Clio saw not a suffering but a pleasure in this, and so their talk centered upon a discussion of what they named the pleasure of exhilaration: the pleasure of adventure, taking risks, and experiencing newness even in the face of danger, the pleasure of choosing to cause a great rush of adrenaline to surge through one's body, as powerful as lightening bolting through a storm cloud. As I read, the descriptions felt as if they were my own, naming my experiencing on the field when Timon broke out into a run. Clio thought it unavoidable that Amazons would confuse such a pleasure with a form of suffering, as being cast without will into such feats of daring would surely cause immense damage to one's body and spirit, while facing them willingly could turn the same animal instincts into sharp and singing pleasure. Clio said:

            _Exhilaration arises when the spirit decides to brush against the risk of injury and death for the sake of expanding life into new and as yet untouched realities._

            In the coming days, I lost myself in riding as much as in the words of the third treatise. I considered how fear and excitement could transform – one into the other. I tried to imagine what it might be like to feel my body put in peril for someone else's aims, a suffering unfamiliar to me and yet well-known by the oldest of the Amazons on the island and by all of those who lived during Clio's time.

            A day came when I rode Timon near the shoreline. My mother had not through to admonish me to stay away from the water in some time, and so I let us move ever closer, until Timon's hooves pressed into the wet sand along the water's edge. Along the shoreline, I saw many Amazons at work harvesting salt, sea vegetables, fish, shrimp, and shellfish. I saw Eurybia among them. Among those who would leave the island on ships set to make discoveries on the open sea, she went the most often. I had heard tales of her rescuing sisters and even strangers in the midst of the sea, braving troubled waters during storms. She understood the sea, my mother told me as a girl, and she could read the waters as plainly as the pages of books and even by sight of the surface seemed to know what dangers lay unseen beneath.

            I was fearless as a girl, and I was taught to swim even as I learned how to walk. Then I swam out too far and was caught in a current that dragged me out to the sea. Many Amazons swam towards me, then Eurybia dove into the water and surpassed them all and came to wrap her arms around me. I could remember only the dazzling blue of the water and how cold it felt beyond the bay and the warmth of Eurybia's body against mine. I had heard the story since. Eurybia let the current carry us out to sea, and the others feared that she had chosen to drown with me rather than to let me drown alone. They ran to get boats to gather their other sisters from the water and try and come to our rescue. But Eurybia merely rested after her desperate swim to reach me, and she let the current carry us out until she led me to wrap my arms around her neck, then she let out all her strength to carry us to catch another current that carried us into a cove, where we were able to climb onto the rocks.

            I remembered my mother weeping with relief over me. My body was shivering. Eurybia left us at once and went out with others to gather those who were searching for us at sea, the sound of horns calling them to one another. By nightfall the next day, everyone was returned. I never braved the water the same away again, and my mother and many of the other women had grown afraid for me to be in the water. As a girl, their fear amplified my own, as I knew Amazons to be entirely fearless beings. Eurybia in contrast to the others would often offer to take me out sailing and said she could teach me to read the sea and the night sky and find my way to anywhere I wished and then home again.

            So that day, as I sat upon Timon's strong back with the words of Clio's treatise ringing in my mind, I watched Eurybia diving into the water with the power and grace of a long-lived Amazon, casting oysters into a basket, and climbing out easily onto rough, wet stones jutting up from the water. She stood straight-backed and strong with her feet certain on the jagged and uneven stones and her eyes looking out to sea. The water made the sunlight break open and dance on her dark skin, and the tightly woven locks of her hair dripped rivulets of water down her back, her shoulders, her arms, and over her proud chest, the water dancing like liquid fire pouring over her. She turned and saw me, and she grinned a brilliant smile. I found myself leading Timon to a rock so that I could climb down from his back.

            Eurybia dove again and emerged near the water's edge. She walked out to meet me, rising like one of those first Amazons, glorious and imbued with power from the sea. Only the scars on her skin spoke of the many years she had lived already in this world. Before she could even greet me, I spoke in earnest.

            "I am scared of the sea," I said.

            "You held no fear of the sea as a younger girl," Eurybia said.

            "I did not know then not to trust the sea," I said.

            "What do you mean 'trust'?" Eurybia asked me, as she knelt down in the sand and raked her fingers through it just to feel the unique softness made from stone.

            "There are many powers in this world greater than me – all the Amazon warriors and the horses, like Timon. But I can know them and learned to trust them. The sea is more powerful still," I said, perplexed even by my own words and longing to experience what Eurybia experienced with the sea, to find the exhilaration I knew she felt as she cast herself into the waves of a sea ever-changing that could never be known entirely.

            "The sea is no animal. She knows neither love nor hate, neither comfort nor fear, neither mercy nor wrath. You simply learn to understand the sea, and you learn to trust yourself," Eurybia said.

            "Will you teach me?" I asked her.

            "I will," Eurybia said, as she stood and held out her hand to me.

            I remembered how to swim well enough, but the waters were rougher her than anywhere I had been allowed to swim. So Eurybia got her arms around me and held me up higher in the water. She taught me to feel the pattern of the waves and breath in a matched rhythm so that the water would not make me feel alarmed or choked. She held me and swam on her back, the way she had when I was a girl and she had rescued me. Then she carefully held me buoyant as she taught me to do the same. Eventually, I gained confidence and mimicked her ways of moving through the waves, slicing through the sea, using the weight of the water to great power enough to surge forward or downward into the sea.

            We swam for hours with Timon wandering along the shoreline waiting for me. Eurybia led me to where the currents could grab at us, then she taught me to swim furiously at an angle against the current. She lifted me out onto the rocks and began to teach me to read the water for what was beneath. She knew every place among the shoreline of Themryscira and how the water behaved there at different times of year, and I felt a fierce commitment to learn the same.

            As we stood on the rocks, I felt a desire to dive into the water as I had seen her doing when I came. Eurybia taught me to read the surface of the water for rocks underneath, and then she carefully showed me how to dive into the water. I stood amazed, marveling at her grace and strength, as she dove in a perfect arc and glided beneath the water to break the surface and swim back to cast an oyster into her basket and lift herself out, and stand beside me. When I looked at the water and considered diving, I felt a struggle inside of me.

            On the one hand, I could feel my body longing to mimic the precise movement Eurybia had made. An intuitive sense of the way the water would feel rushing along the length of the arc made by my body already arrested my senses. I felt the pull of exhilaration promised to me calling within my body. And yet my old fear of the water bit at me, harsh and sharp within my chest. I stood poised on the edge of risk between fear and exhilaration. Eurybia's hand touched my arm.

            "Wait until your body is ready," Eurybia said.

            I stood for an incredibly long moment. I looked out to sea and back to the shoreline where Timon stood watching us patiently. When my fear settled and my heart felt ready, I lifted my arms, and I dove. The rush of water ran along my body, and a ferocious joy raked through me. I cut so smoothly through the water that I nearly forgot that I would have to come up to breath. It was an easy thing to curve my back and let my legs send me to the surface. As I broke the surface of the water, the sun on the surface of the sea dazzled my eyes for a moment. I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Eurybia swimming to come beside me. When I dove, she followed close behind to make certain that I did not make a mistake. She raised one arm out of the water and over her head in triumph, sending an arc of droplets dancing into the sun. I mimicked the gesture and sank lower into the water, when I did. I kept my arm up and felt how my heart was pounding then, before I turned and swam to the shoreline.

            Eurybia followed me. I felt heavy as I rose up out of the water. Eurybia led me to water's edge, and there the two of us danced a dance of triumph, stomping footprints deep into the sand. Timon took up the same spirit of our dance, and he stamped and tossed his mane at the shallow water.            

            Eventually, Eurybia lifted me onto Timon's back, and I rode home. My mother listened to my story that evening, and even though she could not hide her worry, she said nothing to dissuade me or make me afraid. As I was going to sleep that night, Eurybia came to see me. She brought me a beautiful pearl with a bluish hue that she found in the oysters she gathered that day. Sitting in her palm, the pearl looked to me like it shone with the spirit of the ocean. I kept the pearl for many years held within a box to commemorate the day.

            In the days and years to come, I learned to dive from higher and higher places, deeper down into the water. I learned the layout of every shore on the island. A day would come, many years later, when I could swim alongside Eurybia when no one else could. We would challenge one another and drive one another to greater feats, rolling in our joy as much as in the waves. Clio's wisdom had showed me how to unlock the power the ocean held not to drown me or make me afraid but to lift me up into heights of pleasure and open out an endless world of discovery and adventure even in a place so small as the Amazon island.


	4. The Fourth Treatise:  Beauty

            Once I gained that first foundation in the art of experiencing the pleasure of exhilaration rushing through my body, chasing after more of this wisdom and pleasure became the epicenter of my life. I had found my first true affinity with one of the various forms of pleasure, and I wanted nothing more than to ride and swim all day and constantly increase my boldness. At times, I would raise such a swell of exhilaration in my body that I felt I could stretch out my arms and fly. On the back of a running horse or diving from a cliff, I did stretch out my arms and fly. I gave up my footing on the earth – a daring and overwhelming prospect by nature. And I felt at home, a sense of belonging, and that was doing exactly what I was meant to do in this world.

            My tutor during that time, Adrasteia, wanted nothing more than for me to sit still and focus on my studies. I tried to dedicate myself to learning, as I saw this as a truly noble endeavor. But I had no stamina for contemplation at that age. I had just begun to grow tall, and the change made me almost stern with a sense of determination and responsibility. If my body planned to grow, I would train it to grow into the body of a warrior, the way the Amazons train vines and trees to grow around their doors and across walkways on trellises and arbors. I would slip away whenever I gained a chance so that Antiope could show me new skills, and these I would practice tirelessly whenever I could rush off and gain enough privacy.

            Even when I made a concerted effort to sit and draw, I would soon lose focus and scramble up once more, filled with captured energy from what little time I had spent subdued. My tutor began to send me out to find and draw flowers. No doubt, she was hoping these outings would pacify my urge for constant movement. She intended me to learn both botany and art at once – a noble undertaking, indeed. But concern over the way plants propagated and how to sketch the precise shape of a wild rose's petals, pistils, stamens, and finer parts demanded a peculiar quality of attention that I simply did not possess. I would come back with indecipherable, hastily drawn sketches that were of little use with my mind fixed still on the precise swing of a new sword strike I had been practicing through most of my day.

            A day came when I was riding on Oinone, the most beautiful horse with a dark red coat who had formed a particularly close bond with me. I noticed as we rode through a field that our movement disturbed seeds that floated a bit up into the air and settled down among the plants. A wind came, and a trail of what seemed a thousand airborne seeds with beautiful, domes made of down like feathers lifted from the path we had taken and were sent out before the two of us in an elegant, shifting trail. I watched them dancing through the air, flowing like water, tumbling like birds, and yet somehow quiet in their graceful and unconscious movement.  

            Oinone had stopped at the feel of my body becoming so still and upright, as I watched the flow of seeds rise and move. At the edge of the field, I got down and gathered one of the delicate feathered seeds in my hands. I found also one of the flowers sending out the seeds. Its petals had faded from a rich purplish pink to a dull color. I took one of each of these with me, cupped like sacred treasures in my hands. And I stayed awake late into the night by an oil lamp trying to capture the beauty of the seeds.

            When Adrasteia looked through my latest drawings, she saw only this one. She held the sketch near her face, and I saw her breath stop. She grew delighted.

            "You are learning to see!" she said.

            I considered then how stopping to draw the flower had fixed the beauty of what I had seen far more in my mind than allowing the moment to pass ever would have. Still, I could not present the life that I had seen that day and found so beautiful, the flow and movement of the seeds rising in the field. Yet somehow, Adrasteia could feel something unique in that one drawing that sat amidst a collection of so many others drawn when I was not compelled to attend to my subject.

            I considered that night the book of botany that Adrasteia had written. Each of her drawings of flowers might be connected to a memory such as my own in the field. That must have been at least one reason why her work was so revered – a depth rather than a mere breadth to her knowledge. My mother had been trying hard to keep Adrasteia from growing impatient with me and giving up on what she hoped to teach me, and she was pleased when she found me studying her book in bed. I recounted my story for her.

            "What was it about the seeds rising from the field that made you so patient in drawing them afterward?" she asked.

            "I saw how beautiful they were. Their beauty captivated me," I said.

            "Perhaps in the attempt at drawing that has vexed you so these past months, you have found of life's great pleasures," my mother said.

            My mother brought me a scroll to read from her collection of Clio's twelve treatises on bodily pleasure. I read the treatise slowly, considering the words deeply. On several nights afterwards, my mother would sit beside my bed and discuss Clio's ideas with me, as I sought to understand the great pleasure to be had in beauty.

            The Amazons spoke at length on the ugliness of the world of men where they had been held captive for many years and the way they were esteemed as beautiful there, spoken of as mysteries that could never be understood and yet could be possessed. Clio did not believe than such men ever truly experienced the pleasures to be found in beauty, as attempts to capture or possess beauty would never bring satisfaction. She said:

            _The call to witness fully and revere, to share, and to create what is like in kind – these are the actions evoked by beauty._

            After a long debate among the others on what was most beautiful in this world, Clio acknowledged the beauty in every form that the others esteemed. She herself esteemed women and wisdom above all else. Clio said that beauty was endless, moving in and out of shape, rising and shifting from the very wellspring of life.

            "Does this mean that everything is beautiful, and it is only a matter of perspective?" I asked my mother.

            "No. There is ugliness in this world. But life – life is beautiful in all its forms," my mother said.

            I could not fully take hold of this idea, and my mother could see this.

            "What are the most beautiful things in this world to you?" my mother asked.

            "Antiope's warriors training," I said, and my mother scoffed a bit of a laugh at this.

            "How are they beautiful?" she asked.

            "Their bodies! Their movement! It's the way they move – so precise and powerful. It's graceful and yet filled with fury," I said.

            "Agreed, then. And what else is beautiful?" she said.

            "Dancing. And music. The waves of the sea. And horses running," I said.

            My mother considered my response of a long moment, her eyes dancing in candlelight that reflected on the deep well of her thoughts.

            "Beauty is to be found in life. They are one and the same. Perhaps you see life and beauty most clearly in what is in motion," my mother said simply.

            I considered my mother's words in the days that followed. This seemed true. I had an eye for motion and the beauty held in movements, especially those that were fluid and practiced, graceful and yet also powerful.

            This thought was still in my mind when by chance I came upon Pherenike sitting before a block or rough marble recently cut from the cliffs. Pherenike was one of the greatest living warriors among the Amazons and one of our eldest. She had fought at my mother's left hand in the Amazon's fierce battle for freedom, and she had been imbued with long life being so near to the outpouring of the power of the gods. She and Antiope were the last to relent when my mother ventured toward the fallen Zeus and came to remain at his side as he died. As I watched her sitting perfectly still, her back curved, an elbow on her knee, and her chin rested on a loose fist, the same abundant power always conveyed in the way she moved was somehow transferred over to the potency of her searching thoughts.

            In that moment, I realized that the way that Pherenike moved was very likely the most beautiful thing on all the island in my eyes. Her movements were like to those of a lion or a panther – a great cat with a body fluid and loose, seemingly effortless in its movements, yet poised upon a shift to the most precise and explosive maneuvers. She was barefoot, and her feet were open and flat upon the ground, as if gripping the stones underneath her and rooting her down into the earth.

            I knew that Pherenike was considering into what form she would carve this particular block of stone. She was considered the finest sculptor on the island. Even among so many skilled and sensitive artists, her skill shone out radiant and her works were beloved and revered. My mother joked that Pherenike had an especial affinity with the stone, being partway made of stone herself. And in my child's mind, I took this metaphor quite seriously, no doubt strengthened by all the times I had seen Pherenike take a blow on the practice field with hardly a blink in response.

            On that day, I came close, wondering whether she even heard me. At last, she turned and smiled, and I realized that she had known I was there since I had arrived. The pipe she held in her hand had gone cold, and she tapped it out on the ground. She always smelled of rich and delicious smoke.

            "Well, Diana! What would you like to see me make this time?" she said.

            "That is the wrong question isn't it?" I said.

            "How so?" she asked amused.

            "You should carve what you most want to see – what you find most beautiful in this world. Then I will be able to see it in the way that you see it, and that will be a great gift to me and everyone who sees it," I said.

            Pherenike continued smiling, as she considered my words deeply. She turned back to the stone, even as she reached to rub her hand across my shoulders in gesture of solidarity. The two of us continued to study the stone in silence for a while. Eventually, I left her there to her contemplation and ran off to find my own.

            Not long after this, I found Pherenike beginning to carve the stone. I ran to her side to ask what she was making. She put down her tools and knocked some of the pale dust from her apron. She found a notebook. We sat down, and she showed her drawings to me of the sculpture she would endeavor to carve.

            Just the simple sketches she had made captivated me and filled me with a longing to see her sculpture made complete. Her drawings depicted the most beautiful image of a woman working at weaving with a great swath of fabric flowing all around her where she sat. She was well aged, and I could feel that she herself was a true artist at her craft. As I studied the various angles she had drawn closely, I saw that beneath the cloth around the weaver, a young girl was sleeping, almost hidden. Looking even more closely, I realized that the weaver's ankle was showing, and she was chained to a peg in the ground beside her loom.

            "What story is this from?" I said through my enchantment.  

            "From my own, I suppose," Pherenike said. "You asked me what I saw as most beautiful in this world, and I had to consider. This woman, Terpischore, she represents what is most beautiful to me in all the world."

            "She was a weaver?" I asked.

            "The finest among the Amazons of her time," she said.

            "This girl looks like you," I said, pointing to the figure hidden beneath Terpischore's fabrics.

            "That's because she is me. You have very keen vision, Diana," she said with a soft laugh.

            Pherenike recounted to me the full story. Terpischore spent many, many years of her life in captivity, where she was revered for her incredible skills at weaving. Her worth was considered so great that her captors would never subject her to cruel punishments for fear of indirectly damaging her cloth. She had run away so many times that she was kept always chained down.

            Children would be sent to Terpischore to go out and collect what she needed to make her magnificent dyes. She would ask for different children at different times, claiming that some were better than others at finding certain things that she needed. In truth, she was always watching through her open windows and her door, and when the children in captivity grew weary, she would have them sent to her.   She would hide them beneath her fabrics, where they could sleep in peace.

            When Pherenike was eleven, she began to rapidly grow tall. She also grew weary – so weary, she said, that she was often punished for what was seen as idleness and carelessness. She spent many hours during that year sleeping underneath Pherenike's fabrics. Pherenike brought out a bottle of bright, blue dye. She opened this and closed her eyes to take in the smell. She held for me to do the same.

            "This is made by one of Terpischore's recipes and methods. If I could multiply the smell by twenty times and mingle it with forty others, I could recreate the smell of that resting place I found beneath her works," Pherenike said.

            "I think I can smell it," I said in almost a whisper, and Pherenike made the softest smile with no doubt of this in her eyes.

            "All I knew at that age was my weariness and the shape of a life in captivity. I did not know that in only six years time, I would be swathed in armor on horseback and fighting furiously for all of our liberation. Many Amazons could still remember freedom, and I could not. I was too young. I think the relief and the feel of being stolen away by a powerful Amazon for my own wellbeing left an incredible impression upon me – like a single drought of open air after a lifetime in a stifling mine. I wanted more, infinitely more, for myself and for every one of us.

            "After we came to the island, Terpischore sat everyday at her loom and gazed through her open door and windows, same as I had known of her before. I can hardly convey how different her life was after being made free. Her entire countenance and even the shape of her body altered at once. Her weaving also changed dramatically. She made her dyes in bright colors and wove the most challenging, asymmetrical patterns. She said she liked to the fabrics set loose – that she liked to see them set free and dancing.

            "The memory of Terpischore evokes what truly motivated me to become the most powerful warrior that I could in my lifetime. Warriors and war are certainly not what is most beautiful in this world, but the willingness Amazons have to use what power they possess to protect and shelter one another – even at the gravest of risks and even when burdened down themselves – the willingness we have to keep one another free is what is most beautiful in this world to me," Pherenike said.

            Her words that day created a change within me that lasted forever. I understood a great mystery: I had been able to recognize in Pherenike the most beautiful thing on all the island. I caught sight of this in her movement. I recognized the spirit that moved her and defined her form. This was a spirit of a truly great love. What she found most beautiful was also what was most beautiful to me. In a sense, I had been able to see what was most beautiful to Pherenike, even before I understood that this was what it was. Once her sculpture was finished, I saw this beauty captured in a tangible form – an image that presented clearly the ferocity with which Amazons yearn to give one another freedom and revere the beauty in life, a force hindered and broken by domination and cultivated and set dancing by all right uses of power and wisdom.  

            I was deeply honored when Pherenike would say to others that I had helped her discover the form locked in the stone. She said that knowing I was waiting to see her work gave her strength to put behind her craft. That Pherenike believed that I held a gift of keen vision inspired me to consider my world more closely and to honor the felt sense I had of its many layers and embrace my affinity with the truths I could sense clearly and poignantly even before I knew them by way of any rational thought.

            As Clio had said, I began to recognize the mystery that the world truly contained endless forms most beautiful. In the unfolding patterns of melodies and the joy of finding a dance held within one's own body, beauty was distilled. But it was also everywhere about the island. I saw beauty in the lines and folds of not only the most elegant dresses the Amazons wore but even the common ones, and I also realized that neither dresses nor armor could be truly seen until they were brought into their true form and imbued with life by the bodies of women wearing them. I saw beauty in the branching of trees, the varied patterns seemingly akin to chaos rather than order and yet clearly organized by the deepest intelligence. And still nothing went beyond the beauty of the Amazons themselves. Every body, every mind, every spirit was unique – an entire world captured in a single, sacred vessel.

            Becoming sensitized to beauty made me grow reverent of life, and like every pleasure I had learned to recognize thus far in life, I could feel how this pleasure was able to make me more humane. My tutor, Adrasteia, rejoiced over the gift I developed in drawing, and by way of this practice, she led me through a study of life in every manifestation that we collectively understood. The mystery that fed had life captivated me utterly.


	5. The Fifth Treatise:  Intimacy

            When I began to read the next of Clio's _Treatises_ , I believed that I already knew a great deal of the pleasure she described: the pleasure of intimacy. The idea called to my mind the many nights I had spent sleeping wrapped in my mother's arms for no other reason than that I simply loved being close with her and the way so many of the Amazons had invited me into their homes, the work, their thoughts, their lives. I thought perhaps I knew this pleasure already. Still, I hoped to learn at least a little more from Clio's wisdom on the matter.

            Clio took great pains to describe the difference between the nearness between those who were entangled through forms of domination pervasive enough to be woven into everyday life and true intimacy, which she described as the sharing of a deep knowing, love, and reverence for the life of another that leads to a longing to draw nearer. Clio spoke of the way that the Amazons came to know the patterns and habits of their captors, those she said who had never seen the Amazons truly and only imagined them as contrasts to themselves meant to give them definition and extensions of themselves meant to fulfill their desires. I understood little of the perverse dynamics she described, and yet she cast more clarity on the intimacy that brought me so much pleasure already in my life. Clio said:

 

            _To be truly intimate with any living thing rises from recognizing the innate drive, the longing to express the truest nature imbued within that life, and so to come into alignment with that being and share that deepest and most intimate longing to see that true nature fully expressed._

 

            I held a secret still that I shared only with Antiope in that I had begun to train to become a warrior. Even though I never climbed into Antiope's lap or braided her hair or listened to her stories the way I did with my mother and so many other Amazons, I knew that Antiope alone recognized my innate longing to become the most powerful warrior among my many fierce, strong sisters. Clio would have called what we shared a form of intimacy, although I would not have named it such. And indeed, I cherished our connection.

            Clio spoke of the Amazons of old and those among them who experienced this particular pleasure at all times. The world, she said, was full of a great myriad of life forms all yearning towards their own expressions. There were Amazons, she said, who recognized and so found intimacy with animals and the living world, and so they were never alone. There were times when I felt that I shared a moment of standing in a wisdom like to theirs, feeling connected and wrapped in a pleasure I could describe as a spirit of mutual longing with all around me in the living world.

            Such an experience came to me on day when I was swimming alone in one of the many bays around the island, when a dolphin breached the surface of the water in the bay. I could sense a curiosity in this creature akin to my own, as we studied one another. Even as I moved slowly in the water to come closer without seeming threatening, the dolphin swam gently and did the same. I laughed as we continued to consider one another up close with very much the same air, and the dolphin's jaws fluttered in laughed, as well. We broke out into a game, circling one another and rising out of the water to fling an arc of droplets into the air.

            The dolphin made a distinct sound, then turned and swam away. I waited in anticipation, absolutely certain that I knew what the sound meant, as clearly as if it were spoke in words. Within minutes, the dolphin returned with an entire pod. As we all swam together, I could sense differences among them in age and temperament, history and inclination. Some were wary, others bold, and some were gentle and others quiet ferocious. They were, every one of them, a mystery that could never be know fully, and yet everything I could learn of them would only continue to make them even more beautiful.

            When we finally parted from one another, I felt as if lights were dancing within my chest as well as on the water that surrounded me. I felt a sense that I was blessed by the longing the dolphins felt towards me, a longing for my life to continue on and find great joys, even as I felt the same longing for them. I considered long how Clio said there were Amazons of great insight and wisdom who lived always in this feeling, and I felt that they must be great spiritual leaders indeed, able to long for the greatest good held locked in potential for the entire world.

            Clio said at one point that the deepest and richest intimacy did not form between those who were alike but between those who were equal. I did not fully understand this distinction and yet the idea captivated me. I did not understand then, because there was no one on the island who was equal to me in youth and experience, in uncertainty and continual self-formation. This would change unexpectedly that very year, and I would learn so much more of the pleasure of intimacy than I had ever known before.

            I remember that I was still awake, even though it was late at night, when Cymone came to my room to tell me that the ship of Amazons had returned after five months away and brought an incredible gift along with them.

            "We need your help, Diana!" she said.

            "Me?" I said in astonishment, but I did not wait for an answer.

            I remember that I caught her excitement immediately. I was proud to be summoned, as my mother was always called to greet the returning ships. Cymone grabbed a cloak to throw over my shoulders, and we rushed out the door.

            She took a sharp turn at the end of a street, and I stopped a moment and did not follow. I stood questioning whether I had lost my way in the night and looked up to consider the stars. This was not the way to the docks, I was sure. Cymone had noticed that I was no longer following her and rushed back to my side.

            "This way, Diana," she said.

            "Not to the docks?" I said.

            "We are going to the smithy," she said.

            As we rushed towards the openings into the caves that held the smithies, I did not have time to ask questions. Inside, I was greeted by Amazons crowded into the hall that led up to a nearly closed door. Many embraced me and some even knelt to embrace me more fully, as I was not yet grown fully tall. But they all ushered me forward quickly, and they seemed to all know why I was there. Just outside the door, I found Polyxene and Iole talking. They had led the voyage out on the ship. From within the room, I heard the softest tinking of a hammer on what sounded like a tiny piece of iron.

            "I think we should keep them all together for tonight," Polyxene was saying. "Tomorrow we can show them where all they might choose to stay, but for now, they will be less fearful if they are together." She was interrupted when she saw me. "Oh, good! Diana is here!"

            Polyxene opened the door and ushered me through without a word spoken. In the room, torches were burning. Only a few Amazons were gathered, and all of them had a soft and quiet air. The forges had died down for the night, and two of the finest blacksmiths, Hero and Sotiria, were working together at a well-lit anvil. Hero was knelt down with both of her hands wrapped around a shackle on the wrist of a young girl with short, ragged light brown hair, and Sotiria was carefully measuring pins and hammering them into the joints of the shackle in order to break it open. Hero trusted Sotiria's skill completely and was using her own hands to protect the girl's hands only so the girl would not fear the hammer's blows crashing against her own.

            As I looked about us, I realized there were several other girls in the room. They were all of them quiet and crowded close to one another and to the wall. As I watched them, I recognized that they were familiar with the Amazons who had come on the ship and not with the two blacksmiths. This must be the incredible gift they had brought to the Amazon kingdom, I realized – a gift of young women, girls like me. They were afraid, and this was why I was brought to them.

            These children were indeed a small handful taken from a ship filled to brimming with women and children, mostly girls, all of them stolen lives being carried away to be sold as slaves.   The Amazon warriors had liberated them, but there were a handful of orphans among them who were from other lands. The Amazons had taken the others to within sight of the coast of their homeland, but they feared to let these children go free in a foreign land where they were told girls were not revered. So they brought them home. When they were older, they could make the journey back o their homelands or else remain on and live as Amazons.

            I came to where the frightened girls were standing, very aware that I was the only other child in the room. I perceived that the Amazons had broken the chains that bound the girls while they were still on the ship, no doubt a much louder endeavor that had involved more brute force than what was happening now, but they did not have the proper tools to remove the manacles locked around their slim wrists. I noticed what languages the Amazons nearby spoke to the girls, and I came and greeted them. I held out my arm to see if any of them might take it.

            "I am Diana," I said.

            They seemed too frightened to respond, but one girl who had been standing nearest to the anvil and watching intently reached out to take my arm, uncertain how she should match it to my own. Her grasp was gentle, and I could sense that she was deeply unsure. But in her touch and in her eyes, I also felt that she was incredibly curious.

            "I am Sara," she said, and even though the sound of her voice was loud in the quiet room, the sound was distinctly meek compared to my own.

            Sara seemed torn between studying me closely and watching the work being done nearby. So I came and stood beside her, and we both watched. I began to describe to her what the women were doing: how they needed to find a pin of strong enough steel and the right size to break the joint in the shackle, as this was the weakest point in their design. As I spoke to Sara, I could feel her almost drinking in my words, as they satisfied the curiosity of her mind. I knew the others were listening, and they seemed to grow less afraid standing behind the two of us.

            When Hero found the right pin, and the first girl's wrists were made free, the girl stood staring at her naked wrists. Sotiria threw the manacles into a bucket to be melted down. Hero reached without using any words and softly led the girl aside so that another could be called forward. Their eyes met for a long moment. Then Hero turned to see who would be next.

            Sara turned to me, still quite unsure. I took her hand and walked with her to the anvil. I kept my hands next to hers and stood and talked with her, explaining again precisely what was being done as Hero fitted a new pin and began softly to hammer. My explanation seemed to make Sara less fearful.

            "What is the pin made from?" Sara asked.

            "Iron," I said.

            "But if the cuffs are made of iron, how can the pin cut through them?" she asked.

            "The iron in the pin has been more tempered," I explained and went to the furnace.

            I cracked the door a little.

            "See. There's a fire inside. That's why it is so warm in here. The blacksmiths melt the weaker iron down and make blends. They know how to craft the strongest iron," I said.

            The girl standing near with her irons off wanted to see inside the furnace, I could tell. I stepped back to invite her to look, and she hesitated and then came and peeked inside. I reached out to pump the billows once.

            "This is how you stoke the fire," I said.

            "Get it hot for me, would you?" Sotiria said over her shoulder.

            So I began to work the bellows, and Sara came to help me. The other girl helped, as well. She never spoke, but she looked long at me in silence and carefully watched Hero remove the manacles from all of the girls. Then the girl stood and watched as Sotiria melted the broken manacles down into a shining puddle of iron.

            "We can go have food and sleep," I said to the other girls.

            Sara was ready to come with me at once, and the others followed our lead. The other girl remained standing beside the furnace, and I came back to her to get her to come with me. She was still silent, but she seemed to trust me enough and came away.

            The coming days were quiet a serious affair for me. The girls trusted me more than any of the other women, because I was also young. They looked to my example for how they should behave and even for how they should feel in a given situation. So I took it upon myself to introduce them to what it meant to be a child on the island of the Amazons.

            On that first night, they all slept on beds thrown together from cushions and blankets around my own sleeping chamber. In the morning, I showed them all every place I could think of on the island. We went to the docks, where they recognized the boat they had been brought on. We return to the smithies, where the iron that had held them captive was now being forged into short swords they could carry if and when they had the will. I introduced them to as many women as I could, though I knew there were too many for them to learn in one day.

            Along our way, I learned almost all of their names. They were: Hadassah, Diya, Ealasaid, Leela, Maya, and Inessa. But when I asked the girl whose shackles had been removed first the night before her name, she merely shook her head. The women who had returned with them on the ship all came to check on us at some point during the day, and I asked Iole the girl's name.

            "She never gave us one," Iole explained. "She rarely speaks at all. The others began calling her Io, since I was the one who found her where she was hidden away on the ship. Otherwise, she would have been left behind. But I don't know if she likes the name or not."

            "Do you like being called Io?" I asked the girl a little later, and she only nodded.

            Her face was severe, even though she nodded. I did not know what this could mean and had to take her at the simplicity of her word. Over the coming days, I found her very hard to read, and she seemed almost a mystery to me. The other girls seemed to find her the same.

            Sara on the other hand, I grew closer with by the day. She chose a room near the libraries in the same hall where my tutor, Adrasteia, lived not far from my own room. Sara truly possessed an endlessly curious mind. I remember how she tied her hair back away from her face, so that she could lean over books and read patiently for hours upon hours. The day could be clear, and the horses visible from our window, and still she could grow lost in a book, whether of story or of science. If I wanted her to go outside with me, I had to pique her interest with a promise of discovery. When we walked, she looked not ahead but down at the plants or up the sky, wanting to know every flower, every bird, why the shapes of the clouds were different.

            Sara, I came to realize, longed to understand the inner workings of things. I loved her, and so I also longed for her to discovery everything. Adrasteia could not have been more pleased, as my studies improved working alongside Sara. The changing of the seasons brought a unique excitement for me. I ran with Sara to the docks to see the schools of migrating fish brought in unlike any she had seen before. I took her to the orchards on the first day with a breeze to see the blossoms in the apple orchards falling magnificently. We rode through the fields many days, hoping to find exactly the right time of year, until finally the seeds rose up the way they had on the day that I began to truly learn to see beauty in the world.

            I saw endless beauty in Sara and found so much along with her. Many nights, Sara and I would lie on the balcony near my room and study the stars. More than once, we left a smoke smudge or a wax dripping on the pages of the books of constellations, the turning of the heavens, and the stories given to the shapes in the sky. Often, we would fall asleep in my bed after talking together until late into the night.

            Sara told me everything she could remember of her life before – the shape of the land, the trees with long slender leaves like needles, what little she could remember of her mother, stories of her father and her little brother and grandmother, the sweet mule that helped her father turn up the soil, a red dog she loved who would wander with her through their village who once chased a bear away from them while she was carrying her little brother and picking berries in the woods, and the story of the day they were boarding a ship in desperation to flee a coming army, and she was dragged away in the crowded shuffle and stolen. I wept when she told me this story, as if I myself had suffered a great loss on that day, and she wept remembering, and we held one another, comforting Sara's sorrow held now someplace between us. I put my own life into story for the first time, wanting Sara to know me as well as possible, and I witnessed Sara's amazement at so much of my tale.

            I took incredible joy in offering Sara a life akin to my own and in watching Sara's spirit open out to a life among the Amazons. As she took up her place, I saw how unlike it was to mine. She did not long for adventure and skill in combat but for discovery and knowledge. The other girls found their places, as well. Hadassah loved the sea and the women taught her to boat and fish. Diya said that she could still feel her family, even though they had all died. She learned everything she could about the spiritual world and the afterlife. She cared for gravesites and memorials, and the women helped her to build one for her own family where she could commune with them. I often saw her walking with very old women, quietly listening to their wisdom. Ealasaid began to train as one of Antiope's warriors. She was small, and she loved the bow and spear the most, weapons that offered her the most reach.   Leela went into the prairies and hills with the shepherdesses. I remember her best carrying a lamb across her shoulders. Maya and Inessa never parted from each other, and they tended gardens and helped put away food stores.

            Even on those first nights after they arrived, Io had returned to the smithy where she had first been brought. Many woman offered her places in their homes, including all of the Amazon blacksmiths, but she remained there. She would sleep curled near to the forge where she had stood and watched the iron that once held her captive melt. She seemed tired, far more tired than the others, and the Amazons let her rest and keep to herself as much as she wished. As time passed, the blacksmiths crafted her a bed near the furnace and placed a washbasin and a trunk in a room nearby. Io would stand and work the bellows for hours, and Hero would explain what she was doing, step by step, part by part as she worked nearby. Still, it had taken some months for Io to finally come and take up a hammer that Hero offered to her and to raise it to strike the first bit of iron she ever shaped. She became an apprentice afterwards to all the blacksmiths at once, and she so rapidly excelled in her craft that they said Io must somehow have the blood of Hephaestus running in her veins.

            When less than a year had passed since the other girls arrived, the Amazons gathered to a celebration of the solstice on the darkest night of the year. I found myself watching my new sisters that night, still feeling responsible for them and now feeling happy for them and the lives they had made. I felt that despite being supplanted, they were putting down roots and thriving. At first, I could not find Io, and only after the celebration was well underway did I finally see her at the edge of the great circle of women cheering for dancers who were leaping and spinning in the air.

            As I watched Io standing behind many taller Amazons, still wearing a thick leather blacksmith's apron and peering through the crowd, I could practically feel the way that she felt less drawn into the circle than drawn back towards the smithy. I tapped Sara on the shoulder, ducked out of the circle, and ran around the outside of the gather of women to find Io. She was already walking back the smithy, so I ran to her with Sara close behind me.

            "Did you see the dancers?" Sara asked Io in delight.

            Io nodded and looked back the festival. She stood incredibly uncertain. Sara took Io by the arm, wanting to lead her back.

            "Come on! They will bring out the feast soon!" Sara said.

            Io remained in quiet conflict, even though she began to walk with us. I took her hand, and she opened her hand at my touch and allowed me to do this. I could feel the rough calluses on her hand that made me think of my own calluses from sword fighting that I always tried to tend and keep hidden from my mother.

            The three of us made our way softly back to the circle. As the women noticed us, they moved aside and ushered us forward to where we could see. Soon we stood at the front looking out over a curved line of Amazons surrounding wild dancers. The other young girls were also standing in the front, grinning and cheering.

            I kept hold of Io's hand rather than clapping, though I was ready to let go at any sign that she wanted to be let free. I turned to see her face as she focused on the scene before her. Her apprehension faded away. I got the distinct impression that she fully expected some other people to be there, even though she knew all of the Amazons on the island. Io's relief as she looked around the circle and took in so many faces and found all of them to be only the faces of women she knew settled across her body like dropping a heavy weight.

            After a time, Io turned to me, and she smiled a genuine and sweet smile. I got a stronger hint of who she was then, a spirit unusually strong and stoic yet also kind, gentle, and sensitive. As I stood there beside Io, brought into the circle of Amazons, and my best friend hugged in close to her on the other side, I found myself truly relishing a moment deepest pleasure that I recognized to be the pleasure of intimacy. The three of us were formed into one, distinct unit among so many Amazons, and we stood quietly claiming Io's place among her people.

**Author's Note:**

> You can reach me through the comments thread here or on Tumblr under the same username (YesBothWays).


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